


Gift of the Were-Spider

by TaraSoleil



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Boys Locker Rooms Smell Worse than Death, M/M, Solving the mystery, Werewolf Senses, You can Add a 'Were-' to Just Any Old Animal These Days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 06:16:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16153316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraSoleil/pseuds/TaraSoleil
Summary: Stiles finds himself in possession of some supernatural senses. To a boy so clever, there's only one possible explanation: Were-Spiders.Or the one where being attractive to werewolves has unforeseen consequences.





	Gift of the Were-Spider

Stiles paused in his work, fingers hovering over the keyboard and nose tilting up as he breathed deep the glorious smell of golden brown and delicious curly fries. That heavenly aroma. It wasn’t one that came into the Stilinski house often, not with his dad on the most stringent, heart-healthy diet Stiles could manage. He took another breath and then frowned.

“Dad, you know curly fries are off limits!” he yelled.

The creak in the floor told him his father had frozen mid-step. “How in the hell do you know about that?”

Stiles shoved himself away from the desk, his chair rolling him halfway across the room where he leapt to his feet and sprinted the yard and a half to the doorway. He looked out into the hall, glaring at the man. His self-righteous indignation faltered when he saw two empty hands and no bags slung across his shoulder. Even Noah Stilinski wasn’t so desperate for greasy fast food that he would start cramming burgers and fries into his pockets just to hide them from his son.

“Where are they?”

“My shift ended early. I ate before I came home,” his father admitted.

Stiles scowled. “Okay, two questions: Did you forget that shit will kill you? And you didn’t bring me anything?”

“I think the real question is how did you even know,” Noah countered. “I ate with the windows open over an hour ago. Zero evidence.” He gestured to his pristine shirt. There wasn’t a hint of grease or ketchup anywhere on him.

“I can smell it,” Stiles said, crossing his arms and staring the man down. “The nose doesn’t lie.”

“Maybe for a werewolf,” he said, the corners of his mouth dropping further as his eyes grew round and worried. “Stiles, did you get bitten?”

“What? No,” he scoffed. “Stop trying to distract me from the real issue here.”

“The real issue is a son with no respect for his very tired father. Go finish your homework, Stiles.” He turned and walked the rest of the way to his room, closing the door and commenting, “Just what I need, a werewolf son. As if he’s not a big enough pain in my ass as it is.”

“I can hear you!”

“Exactly my point. I’m whispering behind a closed door, and you can hear me. Stiles, if you’re going to go and do something as stupid as get yourself turned into a werewolf, you could at least have the courtesy to tell me.”

His heart dropped like a stone into his stomach. Not because his father was so convinced that he was lying, but because he could hear each word as clear and precise as if the man were standing immediately before him, the angry rasp and worried undertone, all uttered in a harsh whisper on the other side of his closed bedroom door. Stiles had wolf hearing. He had a wolf’s sense of smell. How? He hadn’t been bitten. Except two days earlier by a spider.

Shit. Were werespiders a thing?

He turned, grabbed his keys from beside the door, and raced to his Jeep, diving into the driver’s seat and praying it would start. The moment it did, he set the tires to squealing on the driveway as he gunned the engine. He drove well past the speed limit halfway across town to the Animal Clinic. Deaton would know. That was his job. To know things.

“I’m sorry,” the veterinarian called from the back rooms. “We’re closed.” In the past, when he had heard the man say such things, he always sounded distant, muffled. Today, it sounded as if he was in the same room with him.

“This is kind of an emergency!” he shouted back, reaching for the gate. If he had been turned somehow, he wouldn’t be able to even touch it. The whole building, including the guest counter, was made from rowan, mountain ash wood. Werewolves couldn’t lay their hands on it, yet Stiles still could. This was getting more confusing by the minute.

He found the man restocking supplies in one of the exam rooms. Without looking away from the cabinet, he asked, “Stiles, what seems to be the trouble?”

“Are werespiders a thing?” he demanded without any pleasantries or preliminaries.

Deaton paused in his work, glancing back at the boy with a look of pure concern. “I’m sorry?”

“Werespiders. Are they a thing? I mean there are werewolves and werecoyotes and werejaguars. So are there werespiders?”

“Not that I’ve ever encountered, but when dealing with the supernatural I suppose anything is possible. Why do you ask?”

“I can smell things and hear things that I know I shouldn't be able to, but the only thing I’ve been bit by is a spider.” He pushed his sleeve up to show the angry, red, raised lump on his forearm.

“When did this happen?”

“Two days ago.”

Deaton hummed as he took hold of the boy’s arm, examining the bite. “If this were from some supernatural spider, it would have healed by now. Clearly, it hasn’t, which means you’re still human. I suspect that this is unrelated to your current problem. It should be treated, however. Apply this twice daily until the redness fades.” He pressed a small plastic tube into his hands.

“Yeah, but what about the other thing?”

“Your heightened senses? I’ve heard of only one way for a human to possess the senses of a werewolf. And that is if they have been claimed by one.”

“Claimed? Like as pack?” he questioned. “I’m part of Scott’s pack. I have been since day one. I’m his first and best Beta. Did it take this long to kick in?”

A look passed across the man’s face. He knew it from all the times he and Scott had come to the man with their problems. That was the look he wore when he knew an answer but didn’t want to give voice to it. “I think it best that you talk to Derek.”

“What the hell for?”

After a beat, a different expression crossed his face, one Stiles rarely saw him wear. If it had a name, it would have been the ‘are you fucking stupid’ face. “Derek has lived as a wolf his entire life. He was raised among them and with the human members of his family. He can explain better than I can,” Deaton insisted. It was a weak answer and half of it was a lie; Stiles could hear it in his heartbeat.

The fact that he could hear Deaton’s heartbeat at all was enough to have him take the man’s advice and run with it, even if he wasn’t overly keen to talk to Derek. The guy still made him nervous. Not scared. He hadn’t been scared of the man in some time, but he put Stiles on edge in a way that was terrible for his anxiety levels. He skirted a panic attack whenever they were together too long. The worst part was that the fault lay entirely with Derek. The man was weird around Stiles. And only Stiles. He had bonded with Scott; Stiles had found them sitting together talking werewolf like they’d been doing it for ages. He had caught Derek helping Isaac with his homework more than once and teaching Malia about the shift. Somewhere between Deucalion being an enemy and Deucalion becoming their ally, Derek had become pack where before he was a standoffish loner and an antagonistic asshole. Except he was still that way with Stiles.

The only thing Stiles could think was that maybe the man was somehow threatened by him. It was ridiculous because he had felt how strong Derek’s fist was and knew the former-alpha could kick his ass if he wanted. But Stiles was higher up in the pack hierarchy. He wasn’t kidding when he called himself Scott’s best Beta. He might not be a wolf or have any sort of superpower -- well, until today -- but he had been there longest. That gave him a higher rank. If that’s what was making Derek weird around him, then he was an idiot. Well, a bigger idiot than Stiles already knew him to be. There was no denying that Derek was not a planner. He was a pantser. He flew by the seat of his pants, reacted too quickly and got himself and everyone else into trouble. That wasn’t enough to dislike him, even if it had left him saving that asshole more times than seemed feasible.

He paused, realizing just how many times he had helped save Derek. They’d known one another less than two years, but he had already saved that moron at least three times. Four if you counted moral support in a time of mental anguish, which Stiles absolutely did. So, really, Derek should have been his best friend by this point because he knew that Stiles was solid as a rock when it mattered most. Instead, he was all weird and kept his distance and made creepy murderous eyes at him. Derek just had issues. That’s pretty much all there was to it.

One of those issues being the creepy, resurrected uncle currently taking up far too much space in his loft. Peter. Now there was a guy with issues.

“Well, if it isn’t little Stiles,” the man purred.

Stiles groaned. “Why are you always here? Don’t you have an apartment downtown?”

“Yes, and it’s being painted,” Peter replied, stepping aside to let Stiles through the doorway.

He stalked past him and staggered to a stop, hand clutching his nose. The loft smelled. It smelled so much worse than the animal clinic, so much worse than his own house. It was dripping with stress and worry and something very like sex. It was nearly enough to have him turn and run back into the clean, stale air of the vast and vacant factory.

“Problem?”

“How can you stand the smell?” he demanded.

Unbelievably, Peter took a breath, long and deep, brows folding together as he considered the various scents. “It just smells like Derek.”

“It’s awful!”

“Now this is fascinating,” he said with a curling smile. “Since when can you catch Derek’s scent?”

“Since right now, and I really wish I couldn’t. Deaton said the only way that can happen is if I’ve--”

“Been claimed, yes.”

“So it’s true?” he balked, wishing there was a way to hold his breath and still be able to speak. “Being part of Scott’s pack made me semi-werewolf-y?”

Peter looked back at him, cold blue eyes as calculating as they ever were and an amused little smile on his face. “Is that what the good emissary told you?”

“No, he just said I’d been claimed and to talk to Derek. So here I am drowning in his angst-stank and talking to you. Can you tell me how to fix this or point me toward Derek?” His eyes were starting to water and his throat was growing tight from trying not to breathe.

Sighing, the man pointed him to the door. “He’s gone to Los Angeles for the week. He’ll be back Sunday.”

“Fine. Awesome. I’ll be back Sunday,” Stiles said as he ran from the loft, desperate to be rid of the overwhelming sadness filling his nose. Derek was so much more complex than he appeared, going by his smell anyway.

Going by their smells, everyone was a complex mess of emotions all the time. Stiles always thought he was alone in how anxious he was on a daily basis, but there wasn’t a single person he crossed paths with that wasn’t an absolute wreck. His father was surprisingly worried despite the calm, passive exterior. When Melissa was yelling at them, she was clearly so much more scared than she let on. Kira, Lydia, Isaac, everyone at school was exuding an acrid tang from the moment they came onto school grounds. It was oddly comforting knowing he wasn’t alone in how terrified he was of simply being alive.

“Brace yourself,” Scott warned.

They were standing outside the boys locker room. Stiles could already tell this was going to be on par with Derek’s loft as one of the most noxious experiences of his young life. At least at the loft, he was subjected only to the smells one man could emit. Here there were dozens. All that sweat and testosterone, the anger and worry, the joy and fear. And the arousal.

His eyebrows popped up without his permission when that scent hit him. “Dude!”

“I know, right,” Scott muttered. “Half of them don’t even realize it.”

“How can they not? This is like full-on boner levels of stink,” he hissed, willing himself to breathe only through his mouth. It didn’t help.

“You’re one of them, so shut up.”

“What? I am so not,” he insisted. “I have a deep and abiding love for Lydia. Have since third grade.”

“And yet you still smell like a sex shop whenever you’re around Derek too long.”

His face fell as Scott’s words hit him, as they ricocheted around his brain. He was attracted to Derek? Well, that wasn’t hard to believe. Derek was an attractive guy. He would have to be blind not to notice it. And since he had stopped being such a dick to everyone, it was a lot easier to see him as more than just a surly leather jacket with angry eyebrows. Now he was Scott’s second-best Beta, always reading some ridiculously thick book in the corner, throwing out historical facts like the nerd he was. It was adorable.

“See,” Scott said.

He didn’t have to ask why his friend suddenly knew what he was thinking, because he could smell the change in his own scent, too.

“Well, shit,” Stiles muttered. “I’m into Derek. What am I supposed to do now?”

Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe use your superpower to see if he might like you, too.”

“Dude, he doesn’t like me. He likes everyone else except me.”

“Just go talk to him.”

“Fine,” he huffed, hating how his heart did a little skip at the idea. He especially hated that Scott could hear it, that Isaac could hear it, that he could hear it. He missed being a boring, ordinary human, ignorant to all the secrets people kept hidden away behind carefully crafted facades.

Sure, he could keep his dad from sneaking artery-clogging curly fries, and he knew when Mr. Hostetter was going to surprise them with a quiz. And, okay, he was able to hear the coach of the opposing team lay out their plays and relay that information to Scott for an unbeatable lead in Friday’s game and set them well on their way to the state championship. And there was the comfort that came with knowing that everyone in the classroom, including the teacher, was just as anxious about their lives as he was.

“What’s that face for?” Malia asked around the highlighter clamped in her teeth.

“I’m starting to like my superpower,” he complained.

“Well, good. Maybe now you’ll stop stinking up the room with your sadness.”

“I am not sad.”

“Your scent is.”

Scott set his Calculus textbook down on the bed and fixed him with doleful eyes. “Is this about Derek?”

“What? No!” he squeaked. He could hear his own heartbeat quicken. “Shit. Fine. Yes.”

“It’s Sunday,” Malia pointed out.

Scott advised, “Go talk to him.”

“I don't want to. He’ll smell that I know things now. He’ll be all repulsed by my stupid, clingy, teenage, gay smell,” he whined. “Why did this happen to me?”

“I killed my mom and sister on a full moon,” Malia stated with her usual bluntness. “Isaac used to get locked in the freezer in his basement. Kira’s fox is trying to take over her body and kill people. Derek had his whole family burned alive. Really, it was just a matter of time before your life got as messed up as ours.”

Stiles stared at her, unsure if her words were helpful or not.

“What she means is that it will be okay,” Scott said, though how he got such an optimistic platitude from the girl rattling off everyone’s painful life problems Stiles wasn’t sure. “Just go talk to him.”

“This is going to end so badly,” Stiles insisted even as he pushed himself up off the floor.

He took his time driving to the old factory on the outskirts of town. It should have taken him under thirty minutes, but, with all the detours he added, the trip took him nearly two hours. As if that wasn’t enough cowardice, he stopped the elevator at each floor, walking every corridor, inspecting every corner and empty loft. He told himself he was just making sure there were no squatters, but he wasn’t fooling even himself. Four-and-a-half hours after leaving Scott’s house, he finally arrived at Derek’s door. Taking a deep breath didn’t calm him, because he could catch the faintest hint of the man’s scent. It was excruciating.

Twenty minutes of fidgeting and indecision later, and Stiles was still outside the door. He would probably have remained outside that door indefinitely except his phone buzzed the arrival of a text.

_Are you planning on coming in? Or are you just going to keep filling the hallway with your anxiety-stink?_

Scowling, he tugged hard on the handle, setting the door to rolling open. “I do not have an anxiety-stink,” he called indignantly.

“You do,” Derek countered. “And it’s the most pungent thing I’ve ever been forced to smell outside a locker room.”

A week ago, he might have thought that was bordering on funny, but having smelled the overwhelming horror that was a boys locker room he didn’t think there was anything even remotely smile-inducing in that statement.

“So what do you want, Stiles?” Derek perched himself on the arm of his couch, looking as much like a damned fashion model as anything else. The stupidly thick book within reach only made him look all the hotter. So not fair. “Stiles?”

The diplomatically-worded explanation and request for help that he had spent the better part of the week preparing vanished from his mind, and he instead blurted,“There’s something wrong with me.”

“This isn’t news.”

“Something _supernaturally_ wrong with me,” he corrected. “Deaton said to talk to you about it.”

“Okay. Does it require a quick exit? Because you’re letting the heat out.” He gestured to the door.

Stiles had left the door open intentionally, hoping to dissipate the smells, not wanting to be trapped in the loft with all its concentrated Derek-ness. But he couldn’t explain it without insulting him, and an insulted Derek would likely not be willing to offer much help. So he turned and pushed the door shut. “For the record, your single-pane windows and twelve-foot ceilings are more wasteful. Just saying.”

“Noted. Now what’s wrong with you? You don’t seem possessed.” Derek cringed even as he said it, as if his mouth had run away with him.

Stiles shuffled closer, more of Derek’s scent hitting him. It wasn’t quite as brutal as it had been on first smelling it. To some degree it was because he had encountered it before, so it wasn’t as much a shock to his nose; he was used to it. More than that, however, it seemed as if the scent had altered. It made sense, people’s smells shifted as their mood did. Whatever anxiety and anger had been tormenting Derek before he left for Los Angeles wasn’t bothering him now. Today, he smelled, well, better; there was a bit of anxiety, some struggling, a touch of self-loathing, a boatload of arousal. Overall, it wasn’t intolerable.

“Stiles?” Derek prompted.

“I can totally smell you,” he said, watching the man’s face draw tight with confusion. “I can smell everything. I can smell like I’m a werewolf, but I’m not one.”

Derek’s expression shifted into something not quite blank. There was too much worry there for it to be blank. Even if his face didn’t give him away, his scent would have. “What?”

“You smell crazy nervous right now,” Stiles pointed out.

“This isn’t funny, Stiles.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m trying to figure out how to make this super-sniffer turn back to human. The super-hearing, too. It’s not as much fun as I thought it would be.”

As if proving him right, Derek swallowed hard, and Stiles could hear the muscles shift under the man’s skin as his larynx closed, as the saliva passed from his mouth to his throat, as he let out a small, shaking breath. His gaze slid up Derek’s throat to settle on his wide, panicked eyes.

“So any idea what’s going on?” he asked.

“One.”

“That I’ve been ‘claimed’?” he offered with overly sarcastic air quotes. “That was Deaton’s thought on it.”

Derek eyed him a moment. “He didn’t tell you what that means, did he?”

“Yeah, that I’m pack, which I already knew. Wait, is that not what it means?” he questioned, frowning as he realized that Deaton wasn’t the one who said claimed means pack. Stiles had said that. “What the hell does it mean, then? Claimed like some prospector sticking a stake in the ground and taking ownership? Oh, shit, that’s what it means, isn’t it? Someone put some kind of supernatural voodoo whammie flag on me and now I’m werewolfish because of it.”

“That’s kind of it,” Derek agreed, voice tight. Stiles might even call it strained.

Stiles turned and stared at him. “That’s why Deaton sent me to you. You had humans in your family. They had probably been claimed like me. You know how this stuff works.”

“Not reall--”

“How do I get unclaimed? I need to tell the werewolf prospectors that there is no gold in these hills,” he insisted, barrelling over the man’s attempt to protest. “These are barren lands. _Bad_ _lands_.”

“Stiles!” Derek shouted and gripped his shoulders almost until it hurt. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Yes, it will. I’m immensely annoying. I can drive anyone off.”

“No.” He shook his head slowly as he sighed. “This doesn’t happen based on some passing whim or a short-lived crush. If someone claimed you, it’s because they know you and want you. All of you. Even your more irritating habits.”

“Well, they should have asked first,” he grumbled.

Derek breathed a laugh as he smiled at him. “Claiming someone isn’t generally a conscious action. It’s usually completely involuntary. The bond just happens. It’s two people who spend too much time together, forming a relationship of mutual trust and, maybe, some degree of attraction. The bond just forms.”

“You--” Stiles muttered, staring at him. “You... you are shit at this!” He pushed the man’s hands off him, stalking across the loft to the wide expanse of worn wooden flooring where he could pace unimpeded. “Absolute shit. By that logic, I could have been claimed by damn near any werewolf I know. We all hang out together. Scott and I have been practically brothers since we were like seven. Hell, even you could have done this to me!”

Guilt hit his nose, muted and musky. His feet stopped without him telling them to, and he turned, mouth hanging open. “You.”

“Stiles, I--”

“It was _you_?”

“Remember, I said it was involunt--”

“That’s why Deaton send me to you. He knew you were the reason,” Stiles said, growing progressively louder until he was yelling at the man. “You claimed me. You’re the fucking prospector.”

“Can we stop using that metaphor? I already know there’s gold in your hills, Stiles. I’m not blindly staking claims in the hopes that you’ll pan out. I’m investing wisely,” he insisted.

The boy frowned, arms folding defiantly across his chest. “I thought it was involuntary. How can you invest wisely if you’re not even trying to do it?”

“I said it was _usually_ involuntary,” Derek reminded him.

“Usually my ass,” he muttered. “Well, unclaim me.”

“I don’t know how,” he admitted. “And even if I did, I don’t want to.”

“You said it’s two people spending too much time together,” Stiles said, grasping for something, anything that might turn him completely human again. “So we could see each other less.” He winced and clamped a hand to his nose. There it was again, that heinous, noxious smell that had hit him the first time he stepped foot in the loft with his super-sniffer. The whole apartment stunk like it even after Derek had left for LA. The smell of Derek’s stress was terrifyingly overpowering. That was the smell of him being afraid to leave, to leave Stiles.

“Holy shit,” the boy hissed, hands falling away from his nose as he studied at the man opposite.

“What?” Derek demanded. He looked unphased, but his smell told a different story. He was a wreck, so much more so than anyone else Stiles had crossed paths with in the past week. It made him like the guy all the more.

“You said this happens when two people hang out too much,” he repeated.

“Yeah, I did. And now you want to spend your time elsewhere. I get it,” he muttered, moving toward the door.

Stiles held his ground. “You said it was mutual trust.”

“Well, we did kind of save each others asses a few times,” Derek reminded him with a scowl.

“You said that it was maybe mutual attraction.”

“That’s not wha--”

“I think you’re hot,” he admitted. “Like supermodel hot. Like I want to see you naked levels of hot.”

“You do?”

“Fuck, yeah. I’m not blind. I am, apparently, a little gay for you. Can’t you smell it? I can smell sex and arousal all over you.” He offered a vague wave of his hand in the man’s general direction.

“No, you just smell like anxiety.”

“Yeah, well, fear of rejection is a real thing.”

“It’s a stupid thing if you’re worried about me turning you down.”

“I know that _now_ ,” he groaned and rolled his eyes. “Are you done being all stressed out, by the way? You smell awful when you’re stressed. Can we avoid that from now on?”

“Are you going to try staying away from me?” Derek offered him one of his rare, toothy smiles as Stiles shook his head in an emphatic ‘no’. “Then I promise not to smell that bad ever again. I hate the idea of leaving you.”

“You’re that into me?” Stiles grinned, inching closer.

“I spent the entire week in Los Angeles convinced you had managed to wind up dead in a ditch. I worry about you,” he sighed. “You’re trouble.”

“Mischief is my middle name,” he agreed.

“Just your middle name?” He smiled again, and the loft smelled of something he hadn’t encountered before. It was sweet and spicy and a little earthy. It was a perfume he could wrap himself in. If this was the smell of Derek happy, then it was definitely something he wanted to actively work to smell forever.

He leaned forward and closed the gap between them, taking the man’s mouth with his own, tangling his fingers in his hair. The scent didn’t change, but it did amplify. Where before it had been light and subtle as if someone had sprayed the room with a fine mist of Derek’s happiness, it now smelled as if someone had knocked over the entire bottle of that perfume. It flooded his nose, got into his pores, clung to his clothes. It was wonderful.

“You smell great right now,” Stiles managed to tell him between kisses.

“You, too,” Derek whispered and then groaned, a pained, aggravated noise.

“What? Did I mess up being gay already?”

He dropped his head to Stiles’ shoulder and whined. “I want to know what you smell like during sex, but --”

Stiles would normally take that ‘but’ as Derek pulling himself back, denying his feelings, martyring himself for some imagined greater good where Stiles shouldn’t be near him or some such bullshit. That was his modus operandi to date and would be a perfectly natural reaction, but as the door was thrown open in a way only a werewolf could manage, Stiles knew that wasn’t what was holding Derek back. It was unwanted company.

“Derek!”

It was Scott. And he sounded pissed.

“Derek! Where the hell is Stiles? And what is that smell?”

“I’m right here,” Stiles called, separating himself from Derek; public displays of anything but homicidal rage and irritation weren’t really his thing, and he doubted that would change just because he had claimed someone. Even standing at a respectful and in-no-way-romantically-involved distance, Stiles was sure they were giving off some kind of vibe. Scott’s bashful smile pretty much confirmed that.

“Oh, sorry, I thought maybe Derek had killed you or something,” he admitted.

“No, but he might kill you for interrupting. We’ve talked about the cock-blocking. It’s a thing bros don’t do, Scott.”

“Yeah, I should go,” his friend agreed as an embarrassed flush consumed his face. He opened his mouth, possibly to say a goodbye or warn Derek not to hurt him. Instead, he frowned. ”Seriously, what’s that smell?”

They took a breath, all three. Stiles still smelled Derek’s delicious happiness. The arousal and disappointment that had been thrown into the mix didn’t detract from the warm scent still flooding the loft.

“It smells… nice,” Scott said in earnest confusion. “It’s weird. It smells kind of like home.”

Stiles looked to Derek, who seemed to be making a valiant effort to make himself as small as possible. He found the man's hand and knit their fingers tight. “Yes, it does.”

As a reward, Derek gifted him with one of the most beautiful smiles he had ever seen.

Yes, it smelled like home, warm and welcoming. It looked an awful lot like it, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so Were-Spiders aren't a thing... at least not in this particular story...
> 
> Alternative title could --and probably _should_ \-- have been Staking Claim, but that's not nearly as fun. Am I wrong? Do tell.


End file.
